Speed is at the core of good service—the faster you can respond to guests’ needs, the better.
For this reason, many hotels are using wireless devices to provide a means of communication for staff members. Some departments taking advantage of wireless communication are food and beverage, security and housekeeping.
“Properties are seeing a real benefit in [wireless] back office operations,” said Tom Racca, VP of marketing for Colubris Networks, a provider of wireless local area networks for enterprises and service providers. “There is still a need to provide services access to guests, but hoteliers are now demanding more services be mobile.”
MTech tracks service orders and guest profiles for hoteliers via the Internet with its HotSOS software platform. HotSOS interfaces with the property-management system and keeps important guest information, such as any issues experienced during a previous stay, at the push of a button. If a staff member is walking the property and sees an issue, he can relay a message from a handheld device to a back-of-the-house employee who can alert the appropriate department and immediately get a resolution in the works.
“Guest requests are reported and the system figures out who should cover it,” said Luis Segredo, president and CEO of MTech.
Building on that technology, MTech recently introduced REX (Room Expeditor), specifically designed for the housekeeping department. REX allows room attendants to track room status and assign cleaning duties via an iPod Touch handheld device. REX uses information in the PMS to notify room attendants when rooms need cleaning and helps them track issues.
“The PMS has no bearing on which guests have checked out and what rooms are occupied,” Segredo said. “We said, ‘Let’s give simple technology to the room attendant and, in their language, we’re going to push out what the next room to clean is.’ We put the intelligence on the server side.”
If you don’t want to eat up bandwidth but still want to communicate wirelessly, HYT America offers two-way radios specifically designed for the hotel industry.
“They are usually used for quick communication amongst staff and to delegate orders from supervisor to staff,” said Nicholas Bacigalupi, marketing manager for HYT America.

Save costs by networking wirelessly
Because a wireless network can support many applications, hoteliers are finding that adding services can be fairly inexpensive.
After the initial cost of installing the infrastructure, many technologies can be added easily, said Tom Racca, VP of marketing for Colubris Networks. “Once you find out that you can blanket your applications, you only have incremental costs,” Racca said.
For example, if a property already has a wireless infrastructure installed, simply adding a few more cameras can boost security. Cameras can communicate wirelessly and video can be cached off site.
Another way security can be improved wirelessly is by providing a way for guards to communicate.
Nicholas Bacigalupi, marketing manager for HYT America, said security probably is the most widely used application for HYT radios. “For now, we are concentrating on providing hoteliers with what they want,” he said. “We provide an economical radio that’s durable, lightweight, easy to carry and easy to program.”
Purchasing chargers for the radios can add up, but HYT now offers multi-unit chargers that power many units at a time.
Even the iPod Touch hardware for housekeeping staff can save money in the long run, said Luis Segredo, president and CEO of MTech. “By buying a [voiceover Wi-Fi] product, you are doing away with the cell phone bill,” he said. “The cell phone model was the perfect fit, but the taxes were killing people.”
MTech provides the data communication and works with suppliers such as Vocera Communications and SpectraLink, who provide the hardware for voice communication.

And, of course, a wireless network that provides Internet access to guests can actually generate revenue when the property charges for Internet use. More recently, hoteliers have started turning the keycard into a purchasing device that can be used at the pool and other areas around the hotel. If the wireless network is integrated with the property-management system, Racca said, keycard purchases can automatically be added to the guest’s bill.

Wireless glossary of terms:
VoWiFi: Voiceover Wi-Fi is one way a mobile handset can be integrated into a voice-over-Internet-protocol network.
Development kit: A software development kit typically is a set of development tools that allows a software engineer to create applications for a certain software package, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system or similar platform.
Browser-based: An application that is accessed via Web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. Also a software application that is coded in a browser-supported language.
Two-way: A radio that can both transmit and receive, unlike a broadcast receiver, which only receives content.
RF: Radio frequency is a frequency or rate of oscillation, which corresponds to the frequency of alternating current electrical signals used to produce and detect radio waves.
LAN: A local-area network is a computer network covering a small geographic area, such as a home, office or group of buildings, that consists of high data-transfer rates, a small geographic range and lack of a need for telecommunication lines.
Mesh: Mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by “hopping” from node to node until the destination is reached.